


Memory

by Jrade



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Kinda, Kinda?, Sleepy Cuddles, hopeful ending at least, painful memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 23:49:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13352088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jrade/pseuds/Jrade
Summary: In the middle of the night, in Emily's arms, Lena starts to toss and turn in the jaws of a nightmarish memory. Emily doesn't know which one it is - not this time. It happens often enough that Lena falls prey to this sort of thing, and she always feels bad about it.Tonight, though, something happens for the first time, and the whole relationship ends up at stake as a result.





	Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Light angst in this one, I think. Prompt was simply, "Memory".

In the middle of the night, Lena started to whimper.

That always woke Emily up immediately.

At first, when they started spending nights together, she’d wake up with a jolt - and then _Lena_ would snap awake, usually with a yell or a scream, and there would be a moment of terrifying confusion and then an awful lot of apologizing.

A soft smile set on her lips, thinking back on that - even as Lena twitched and yelped softly under her breath. Emily’s hand slid over, gently, her arm wrapping around Lena’s shoulders and drawing her in closer.

Emily didn’t awake with a start, anymore. Her eyes opened quickly, but she stayed stock-still, and reacted slowly. It was better. A lot of time had been involved, a lot of practice and error and growing comfortable, but she no longer shocked herself awake when Lena started to twitch in the night.

Still, it always woke her up right away.

Emily tipped her head to the side, brushing her lips against Lena’s hairline in a soft kiss. It was coated in a thin sheen of sweat, salty on her lips when Emily’s tongue instinctively flicked out, and she wondered what nightmare was plaguing Lena tonight.

Usually it was the Slipstream.

Emily’s eyes flicked over to the corner of the room, the Accelerator pulsing gently in its charging cradle, that almost magical device which kept the pilot anchored in reality ever since the accident.

She didn’t like to talk about it much, and Emily didn’t blame her: it was a unique trauma. Wasn’t as if anybody else had been ripped out of time and space in a teleporting jet-fighter, so there wasn’t a lot of established conversation around the topic.

Emily never pressed, though, regardless. Lena said what she was comfortable with, and then she’d go quiet, and then they’d move on to something else. A different conversation, or they’d just hold each other, or maybe watch a show. A spot of Mock the Week, or something like that.

That was during the daytimes.

In the night, those nightmares - the distorted memories of what she’d once lived through - came back with a vengeance. She tried not to sleep too much, as a result. She stayed up as late as possible, even right through the night, in an effort to outrun those nightmare. Those memories.

As if one could ever outrun something they carried with them.

Lena jolted in her sleep, her whole body convulsing for just an instant with an accompanying noise, and Emily wrapped her arms a little tighter around her girlfriend’s shoulders, wishing that there was something more she could do. Anything to ease the fears.

It was a different world, though, and she wasn’t really a part of it - all she could do was stroke at Lena’s forehead, at her hair, as the pilot twitched and whimpered. She could hold her close when she trembled, she could be there to calm her when she awoke with a snap and a shout, but that was all she could really offer.

At least it was something.

Still, she couldn’t help but wonder - as she usually did - what was troubling Lena’s sleep tonight. Whether it was a memory rising up from her past, or her mind filling in some horrible future of nightmarish imagination.

Lena shivered, gasping in a breath between parted lips; she mumbled as Emily stroked at her forehead again, a sad half-smile on her lips and her eyes full of concern in the moonlight. She watched Lena’s lips tremble, and frown, and shift, and start to make words.

“M… datta. N… mor… rooftops.” She gasped. “Sniper!”

Ah, so it was _that_ one. A fresh one, still.

Emily’s arms encircled tighter, wishing she could squeeze the painful memory right out of Lena’s mind - or at the very least, out of her nightmares. It had hurt Emily enough just to hear that he’d died, such a wonderful and inspirational man, but to have been there? To feel like she could have stopped it, if only she’d tried just a little harder?

Emily couldn’t imagine it, the pain that that must cause, but she got a taste of it through Lena. Through the tired eyes in the mornings, through every jolt and twitch right now, every wince and whimper.

Lena blamed herself, despite it all - despite everyone telling her she shouldn’t. Despite her _knowing_ she shouldn’t, and at the end of the day, Emily felt a little bit guilty about it. Guilty because, if she was given the choice between Mondatta and Lena, she’d choose Lena every single time. Mondatta had been a wonderful man, but he couldn’t hold a candle to her Lena.

She held on tight, rocking gently back and forth as Lena’s body was wracked with shivers and shakes - she held on and tried to calm it, and knew she would fail, and just braced herself for what she suspected quite strongly would come next. Whether it would be in a minute or whether it would be in ten, she didn’t know.

It turned out to be closer to the former than the latter.

Lena calmed, at first, her body relaxing softly, and for a moment Emily was hopeful that that would be the end of it. A moment later, though, the pilot awoke with a strangled cry, hands flying to her chest and clutching tight.

Emily squeezed her tight as the nightmare wore off. She could feel Lena’s heart thumping heavily behind her chest, and she whispered softly near her ear, “Shh, shh, it’s alright. S’alright love, you’re safe.”

“Y- I-” Lena heaved, her hands grasping desperately tightly at Emily’s. “I- gah. God, I did it again, didn’t I?”

“A little,” Emily hummed a light giggle through her nose, kissing the other woman’s cheek. “But it’s alright now.”

For a moment, Lena was silent - an unusual event. There had been numerous jokes made about her, ranging from relating her to a shark with its swim bladder, to references to a book called the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and a fictional race which needed to keep speaking otherwise their jaws would seize up and they would die of starvation.

Emily didn’t mind the silence, though, and didn’t try to push her through it.

It didn’t last long, anyway.

“No,” Lena croaked, shaking her head softly. “No, no it’s… s’not alright, is it? For you to be-”

“Lena, love,” Emily interrupted softly with a sigh; they’d had this conversation before, many times, and it always boiled down to the same thing. It killed her that Lena felt this guilty over waking her up. Sure, she was tired sometimes, but that just happened normally. It was more than worth what she gained in return.

Tonight, though, it seemed that Lena was in no mood to listen to her calm but firm counterpoints - she pushed away from Emily and turned around in the bed, vigorously shaking her head.

“No, listen! You don’t-” her eyes shone in the moonlight, glistening, “you don’t deserve this! Getting woken up every night I stay over or, god forbid, the nights you stay over at my pigsty excuse for an apartment.”

The self-deprecating words weren’t really anything new, but the situation as a whole was, and it shocked Emily into silence and stillness - she sat back against the headboard, hands limply at her sides, and she just watched as Lena practically launched into a tirade.

“You don’t- _deserve_ any of this,” she groaned, one hand gripping in her hair and the other slapping at her thigh, “and neither do I but it’s too bloody late for that, too late for _me_ but you- you deserve better than this, Em, you deserve-” she choked off for a second, unable to meet Emily’s eyes anymore - her gaze dropped to the bed in front of her, her hands falling into her lap as she slumped.

“You deserve better than me.”

Emily remained shocked. Remained still, remained silent. For a moment longer. Then, she spoke.

“No, _you_ listen,” Emily whispered, practically hissed as she leaned forward and a tear dripped from her eye and fell straight to the bedsheet. “I. Don’t. Care. I’d wake up a _hundred_ times a night for you-”

“Em-”

“No,” Emily shook her head, ginger hair tossing around her shoulder as she waved a hand, “no, just listen for another moment first, please, because I need to say that I don’t care about _any_ of it, because I love you.”

Lena’s eyes snapped up to meet hers.

They hadn’t said that to each other yet.

“I love you,” Emily repeated softly with a shake of her head, “and I don’t care about anything else - not a damn other thing in the _world,_ because I love you, and you say I deserve better? Better than you?” She laughed, wiping a palm heavily underneath an eye that threatened to spill over. “Good luck, love, because there _is_ nothing better than you. Not for me. You’re the best there is.”

Then Lena was silent again, uncharacteristically silent as the fires of the conversation died away and left only embers in Emily’s gut, in her heart, in her thoughts. Embers which faded away, themselves, and left only cold in their wake.

What if Lena didn’t feel the same way? What if that had been too soon - what if Lena really was caught up in this thinking she deserved better, and decided to leave anyway? It wasn’t as if she could take it back now. She’d said it three times - and she didn’t _want_ to take it back, anyway, because it was true.

Although that made it all the more terrifying that the feelings might not be reciprocated.

Lena made a noise. Not a word, but a little noise that caught in her throat - her eyes were still fixed on the blanket in front of her.

The spanse of fabric which separated them.

What if she didn’t feel the same way?

Emily’s lips trembled, fighting back the urge to say something else - to repeat it, something, anything, but it wouldn’t help.

“Em, I-” Lena still wasn’t looking up. Her voice caught in her throat again, cut off abruptly, she shook her head.

Then she slumped slowly forward, wrapping her arms tightly around Emily and shaking her head against Emily’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I love you too. I’m sorry, I just...”

“S’alright, love,” Em returned with a tearful but soft laugh, running a hand through Lena’s head and then wrapping arms around her in turn. “I love you. It’s- even if it’s _not_ okay, it _will be._ Is… is that alright?”

Lena nodded, squeezing her tightly enough that her ribs almost hurt. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s grand. I just- sometimes… I’m still gonna feel bad about it.”

Emily pressed a kiss to the top of her head, inhaling Lena’s scent deeply and then sighing it back out against her scalp. “That’s okay, love. You can feel bad - and you can tell me when you do. And I understand that I might not be able to do anything to help with it, b-”

Lena cut her off with a shake of the head, a tight squeeze, and a few words. “You do. You always do, Em. You’re the only thing that helps sometimes, I- I love you.”

A soft smile took Emily’s trembling lips in the moonlight. “I love you too. Want to try for another bit of sleep now?”

Lena nodded, but stayed right where she was; arms wrapped behind Emily’s back, head on her chest. Emily relaxed a little, sliding slightly down the backboard and resting on the pillows there, and she laid one hand on one of Lena’s shoulders and the other on the back of her head.

“Sounds like a good plan, love. Give it another try.”

If not tonight, if not the next, she knew she’d be woken by whimpers and shouts again, but she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Waking up for ten minutes, or twenty, or fifty - it was nothing compared to the laughter, the smiles, or the love.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there folks! Here's my thing for today - go check out the other offerings in the collection, too, if you like the idea! I'd say the angst is lighter in this one from me, and it also ends pretty happily, pretty hopefully. I'm gonna consider this canonical for BSN's backstory, for what that's worth, heh.
> 
> Hope you liked it! Have a good day!


End file.
